May 2014:What’s New in Marketing?

Our monthly summary of the biggest ‘need to know’ developments in digital marketing

In this month’s round-up, the two main alerts are in the sections about search marketing (notifying about a major Google algorithm update) and social media marketing (an alert about the impending Facebook brand page change).

We start by looking at advice on applying two classic marketing planning techniques.

Strategy and planning

• Applying Pareto’s 80:20 rule to marketing - this post proved one of the most popular of the month - many find Pareto’s rule familiar!

• Examples of TOWS analysis. Everyone in business knows about SWOT analysis, but I find when training that, relatively few know the much more powerful TOWS analysis that helps you plan forwards rather than look backwards. In this post I take another look at the technique.

Social media marketing

• Mistakes to avoid when creating a social media marketing plan. Our most popular post around social media marketing this month was by consultant Miriam Shaviv, author of our new social media template and example social media plan.
• New Facebook brand page layout - from 6 June 2014. Marie Page explains how you can take advantage of the page layout in your Facebook marketing.

Search marketing

• Panda 4.0 Google update advisory. Given the strength of Google and its impact on sales marketers are forced to hold their breath whenever a major new update is announced because of the fear of this type of problem. Our post reviewed techniques to assess the impact of this latest update announced on 21st May and other Google algorithm updates.

• Latest SEO techniques from SMX London - Gavin Llewellyn reported on 5 SEO trends to be aware of. He also alerted us to these improvements in Google’s Keyword Planner, particularly to show mobile search behaviour.
• Less than 100 days until Google Shopping campaigns switch – are you ready? - Mary Weinstein explained 10 ‘migration musts’ for AdWords advertisers to prepare for this major change. Joel Chudleigh gave more details in his analysis.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• Auditing your site after relaunch Planning for site relaunches often ends at the ‘go live date’. In this post, Vagelis Varfis suggests 8 essential issues to review after ‘go live’.
• Home page as Landing page?. Here I look at examples of the trend for home pages to use landing page techniques to increase their effectiveness.

Email marketing and CRM

• Measuring and improving subscriber email engagement - Áine Dundas explains how to go beyond opens and clicks for serious review and improvement of email campaigns
• Taking your email marketing to the next level. All businesses go through a natural evolution in their use of email marketing as with this example from Argos. This free template and presentation helps you review where you are at and plan future improvements.

• Avoiding CRM project failure - Neil Davey canvasses opinion on the reasons behind the failure of CRM projects and reasons behind it.